The first month And The last post

Post-honeymoon present opening.

Whew!

The updates are all finished. I took you through the rehearsal, the wedding and the honeymoon!

Monday, we'll celebrate our 1-month anniversary. I think we'll be celebrating at a bar as I need to write a Raising the Bar story. But we do have some champagne that was in our honeymoon suite at the hotel that we did not open, and I keep saying we'll drink it for our 1-month anniversary. But maybe we'll break it out early on Saturday or something ...

The 18 days since we returned from Hawaii have been busy to say the least. We got back in the swing of things at work and are adjusting to things at home. Probably the hardest adjustment is having one bathroom and both of us wanting to be in it at the same time. We've sort of been taking turns on who gets the earlier shower! Neither of us are morning people, so we try to decide the night before so the morning doesn't become a whining fest of each of us trying to get the other to get out of bed first.

We also quietly celebrated John's birthday (July 16). I told him we just had a big celebration and I didn't quite have time to plan a party! We opened the abundance of gifts that were left at the reception (our guests were so generous!) We're working on thank you notes and finding homes for all our new belongings. We still need to donate some of the old stuff to charity. Last weekend we painted the bedroom and put all the new bedding on the bed.

But there's still a lot to do around the house, and we still need to return some duplicates and be sure to use gift cards before they expire. And even yesterday we got another gift!

Plus I haven't yet officially changed my name, let alone updated my name info with credit cards, insurance, etc. I have a feeling it will be a bit painful!

I do love being married! It's nice that John is there and we don't go to our separate residences at night anymore! We're discussing our future and all our plans and look forward to a long, happy life together.

But your involvement, the thousands of you who have followed along in my life the last 7 months, is coming to an end. Bride blog is ending, as I am no longer a bride, but now a wife! The blog will be coming out of the quick links by Aug. 1, I'm told, so I wanted to get my farewell in. It will still be accessible through the direct link or a Google search, so if you need access to my oh-so-witty prose, you can find it! (And yes, I am still the content editor at CiN, just the blog is ending, not my job!!)

I've been asked if I will update people on our marriage or if I will do a pregnancy/baby blog when we (God willing) start a family. I guess there is always the possibility if someone here wants me to. I would consider it. But the truth is, while Bride Blog had more readers than I expected, it never got as many readers as, say, the Bengals or Reds blogs. I am thinking of having a personal blog, not directly affiliated with CiN, but I have not yet started one. If you're really interested in keeping up with my life as a newlywed, email me, and I'll send you a link if and when I start my own blog.

But I do thank you who have read along. Thanks for the tips, comments, advice, thoughts and more. Thanks for talking to me when you met me in the real world, and thanks for passing the link along to others. To friends and family who read this, I hope I have portrayed you fairly and kindly and that you enjoyed reading along from Middletown, Missouri, Pennsylvania, down the street or wherever. To those of you who married during the blog's run or who are getting married in the near future, I wish you all the best and hope you enjoyed sympathizing, empathizing and laughing at our shared experiences.

I appreciated the opportunity to blog about my wedding. I have 120+ posts that I plan to print and store in a binder for reminiscing down the line. While I've kept a personal journal for nearly 2 decades, it's been fun sharing my life rather than just writing for myself.

So, intentionally wearing the pink shirt (again), I, along with John and Bride Blog, say good bye and God Bless.

Moon over Maui.